Starfire Scoundrels Campaign Turn Six – also called, what the hell was I thinking...
The briefing said "patrol." Said "routine sweep." Said "hazard pay if you don’t come back wet." So of course we went.
The last missions had seemed pretty easy, so I cranked up the difficulty. Doubled the numbers of swarm brood split into two groups, made some dice rolls and one group was directly across our starting point, the other I held back and would randomly spawn them on opening a door deeper in….
Also using a new model for Kai "Ghost" Tanaka -
Kai has a very bad feeling about this place...
We pushed through an old sewer vein outside Nexus-9—dried concrete, cracked tiles, the kind of quiet that makes your ears ring. Two generators. One plugged vent. Swarm brood rumors. Corporate cleanup contract. Easy credits.
Voss and Hex took point. Jax ran overwatch. Elias, Rax, and Kai hung back.
The first swarm hit fast. Chitin and claws. Scurrying over piles of old junk and debris. We carved through them clean. No blood on our side. Someone even cracked a joke.
Then Rax stepped through the next doorway like it was just another Tuesday - past the empty chamber and on to the next check point, there it was checkpoint two. The others hustled to catch up.
The door opposite Rax blew apart. They came out of the floor, out of the walls—black teeth, red eyes, no sound but the scrape.
Three hits. No stun. No scream. Barely any fight back. Just Rax dropping flat. Gone.
Kai went in howling. Charged the swarm that was playing with Rax like he was some rag doll. She took two down with her boarding saber, but caught a bad one, went down hard. Hex pushed past the second checkpoint, spun, Needler quiet in the dark, finished the last bug drooling filth over Kai, twitched once and quiet.
Voss pushed alone. Veered left, Second swarm. Shotgun barked. Glared sword blade sang. They dropped like they owed her rent money.
Suddenly the floor vent that had once been hastily blocked with debris erupted with vent crawlers….Jax and Elias jumped, let loose with automatic fire, bullets ricocheting everywhere. Voss called back “Fuck, watch your fire, watch your fire…someone check Rax,. Hex screamed, “Fuck...Rax! Kai!” The vent crawlers lay motionless.
Hex made it to Rax…but he stayed down. Didn’t move, motionless in a pool of spreading blood. Kai groaned, bleeding but alive.
Final room. Generator hummed. Jax slapped the tag. Elias hit the relay. Hex re-secured the vent. Kai held what was left of Rax. Voss shook her head in disgust.
Mission logged.
We dragged what was left of Rax back to the light. Helped Kai stumble out. While we were picking up pieces, something glinted in the muck near his body—a small, humming piece of tech. A Displacer. Old corporate prototype. Still warm. Still buzzing.
We cracked open the bottles in the Vanguard’s galley. Four toasts. Maybe five. Nobody counted. Nobody wanted to.
Turned the findings over to the suits who hired us. They went pale when they saw the swarm samples and the Displacer. Turns out we might’ve just stopped something ugly from crawling up through the sewers and into the station. They paid extra. We didn’t smile.
Kai lay in the med bay cot staring at the ceiling for hours. Kept replaying it. Kept seeing Rax drop. Then something shifted behind her eyes. Hindsight—that’s what the event card called it. She came out the other side with a point of luck. Small penance for the nightmares she’s keeping now.
Voss,meanwhile, picked up a fresh rumor while we were cashing out. Something about a derelict station on the edge of the system. Something about people who never came back. Something that sounded exactly like our kind of stupid.
Rax is gone. Kai’s in med bay for at least one turn. We’ve got a Displacer sitting in the armory locker, waiting to be figured out. Voss has a new quest hook burning a hole in her pocket.
This one had real Aliens vibes…took 5 turns total and we really paid the price. Since the swarm attacks all go basically at the same time at the end of their turn, I rolled the hits as simultaneous attacks and I counted all three hits as injuries on the injury table….yeah, no coming back from what I rolled (one death and two crippling injuries).
The crew has two jobs ready and waiting and one of them dovetails nicely with the quest rumor. Guess we need to post some job openings….
First blood...but it wasn't ours...yet
The door blew apart and Rax went down barley swinging (I cannot stress how poorly he rolled in melee and how well they rolled...)
Kai screams slashing, dodging...
Game over man! Game over!
RIP Rax "Wrench" Thal
Thanks for looking!
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